


I'll Give You a Taste

by elliebird



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:57:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliebird/pseuds/elliebird
Summary: Saraprompted "cashton first kiss set within the last six months or so!!!"





	I'll Give You a Taste

**Author's Note:**

> You can never have too many first kisses.
> 
> Title from Katy Perry.

_Do birthday kisses count?_

It’s the first thought Calum has when he picks Ashton up a couple of hours before the end of his official birthday, watching him slink out of the house in black slacks and a leather jacket that they found thrifting together in Portland a few months back. He’s got his hair slicked back and his shirt open at the throat. Calum’s grateful he has a t-shirt on underneath, he doesn’t need the distraction of Ashton’s chest hair. 

He asks himself the same question an hour and two drinks later at the first stop of the night, surrounded by friends, loud music, and overpriced cocktails. 

Ashton is animated, rings glinting as he waves a hand to emphasize the ridiculousness of the story he’s telling. Calum stopped listening but chances are, it’s about Luke. 

If Calum gives Ashton, his best friend and the one person he can imagine spending his life with and never getting sick of, a drunken kiss on his birthday, does it count as some declaration on Calum’s part? If he goes in for a hug when they both reek of vodka and _accidentally_ kisses Ashton on the mouth, will it fuck everything up? Will it give him away?

The answer is a very definite _yes >_, he decides, watching rather glumly as Ashton licks juice-flavored alcohol from his wrist and flashes him a bright smile. 

Calum pulls the lime from his glass of vodka, a splash of cranberry juice added for color, fits it between his lips and makes a face as he sucks at it. He shivers as the alcohol and citrus hit him at the same time. It’s hard wanting to kiss your best friend. It’s especially devastating when your best friend is Ashton _I love everyone and I smile at everyone and I’m so loving and caring all the time_ Irwin.

Calum gets moodier as the night progresses, watching every single person Ashton has ever met in his life show up to buy him a drink, give him a hug, wish him a happy birthday. 

At some point, Ashton’s button-down comes off. The bar they’re in, the third of the night, is a dive that Ashton loves with terrible air circulation. And now Calum has to deal with Ashton in a skin tight black t-shirt that does very nice things to his arms. It’s a lot, especially because Ashton has reached the point of celebration that involves a lot of casually draping his arm around Calum and telling him, more than once, how much he loves him. 

Calum takes three shots in quick succession and then tells the world that Ashton’s his soulmate on Instagram. It’s been a long night.

A very many birthday wishes later, Calum smugly leaves the last bar with Ashton. They go home in a Lyft and Calum sits at one end of the car while Ashton leans forward and gets to know their driver, a man in his sixties named Don who’s raising two grandchildren and driving at night to pay the bills.

Calum watches Ashton’s face as he animatedly listens to Don describe his granddaughter. Ashton has a beautiful face. 

Thankfully, Calum falls asleep against the window before he can open his mouth and tell Don how beautiful Ashton is which would turn into a declaration of his love and intent to marry him and spend forever making him happy. 

Alcohol makes Calum very sentimental. 

Calum wakes up in Ashton’s bed many hours later to sunlight in his face. He’s in his underwear and nothing else and doesn’t remember going from the car to the house to the bed, or why he’s in Ashton’s bed and not the guest room down the hall. They have a routine, the two of them and it works for Calum. They go out, get hammered, and Calum spends the night in the guest room. This is a decided departure from the routine. 

Calum opens his eyes. Ashton’s bedroom is very white and the sunlight is too much. He looks around for Ashton but his side of the bed, though obviously slept in, is empty. There’s a bottle of Tylenol on the bedside table, along with a cup of coffee, a glass of water and a green smoothie. 

Calum wonders if they made out. If they did, he hopes he did a good job. But he really hopes they didn’t because how sad to have his first kiss with Ashton be one he doesn’t remember. He can’t remember anything after getting in the Lyft and passing out while wondering where he would take Ashton if they ever had a real honeymoon. 

Calum rests his head back down, grabs a pillow and presses it over his face, blocking the sunlight and the painful reality that even in the daylight, terrifyingly sober but maybe still drunk, with a headache making the base of his skull throb, he’s still thinking about Ashton in a not friendly way. In a very romantic, in-love way. 

Calum tries to be gentle with himself. It’s hard not to fall in love with Ashton. He’s seen it happen to friends in their circle, girls fresh off a breakup who gravitate towards Ashton’s kindness and need to take care of people. 

The bed smells like Ashton which is the problem with sleeping in Ashton’s bed. In the guestroom, the bed smells like laundry soap and linen spray and doesn’t make him think about Ashton being naked and doing sexy things. 

Self-doubt is exhausting. He closes his eyes and when he wakes up again, it’s much later. He’s still in Ashton’s bed, still in his underwear, still a hopeless besotted idiot. Calum pries his eyes open. Ashton’s climbing into bed in a pair of black underwear, his skin and hair damp from a shower, his face pink like he’s been for a run. He’s reclined on his side, leaning into Calum. 

“Are you alright?” Ashton peers down at him, a curl falling artfully across his forehead. 

Calum is not alright. Ashton’s underwear seem very small and he has a lot of skin on display. He’s not wearing any jewelry and Calum finds it oddly disconcerting, even more so than having Ashton sprawl up against him in his underwear. 

“Fine,” Calum groans. Let Ashton think he’s hungover, that he went too hard last night, that he’s going to be sick, anything but the awful truth. Love is terrible and he wants no part of it. 

Ashton settles in bed beside Calum with his head in the pillows and all his warm, damp skin tucked up along his side, relaxed and comfortable like he’s not going anywhere. 

Calum misses old Ashton, he thinks miserably, who’d pull away when the cuddling started. 

Calum’s uncomfortably aware that he’s acting weird. Maybe he’s dead. 

“I’m not being weird,” he says to the ceiling. 

Ashton doesn’t move. “I didn’t say you were,” he says easily. Aside from the warmth radiating from him, they aren’t really touching, but Calum has never been so aware of another person. 

“I’m waiting for you to wake up,” Ashton says and then reaches out and pushes Calum’s hair out of his eyes. It’s very sweet. It’s horrible. 

“I’m awake.” Calum doesn’t look away from the ceiling. It’s a very white ceiling, a stucco ceiling that’s been painted a half dozen times over the years. There’s nothing interesting about it but it’s easier than looking at Ashton. 

“You sure? I think you might be half dead.” Ashton’s very relaxed right now and it’s making Calum feel tense, like maybe something happened that he should remember, but can’t. He has a very fond, amused expression on his face. 

Life would be easier if he _were_ dead. Drinking and being in love make Calum very melancholy. And dramatic. 

Calum sighs. “Why are you looking at me like that?” He doesn’t look away from the ceiling. The ceiling is safe. 

Ashton hasn’t moved his warm, muscular body away from Calum. He can feel where they’re thighs touch, where Ashton’s belly’s touching his side. “Why are you looking at the ceiling?” he says it with a laugh, the same tone of voice Calum remembers from when they were younger and Calum would do just about anything to have Ashton’s attention. He did a lot of stupid things when he was seventeen. 

“It’s a nice ceiling,” Calum mumbles. Calum doesn’t know what happened between falling asleep in the car and waking up in Ashton’s bed. He can’t remember anything except a faint, blurry image of laughing at something Ashton said in the dark. 

Calum rolls to his side and right into Ashton’s stupid, smiling face. He rests his cheek on a folded arm. “Stop it,” he mumbles, hoping Ashton will put some space between them so Calum can breathe a little easier. 

Ashton’s eyes get crinkly when he laughs. “What is wrong with you? You woke up in a surly mood.” He looks like he finds it amusing which is nice. Calum’s aware he’s being churlish. Also, he likes the way Ashton says _surly_.

Calum’s wishing he hadn’t rolled over. If he was still staring at the ceiling he wouldn’t be looking at Ashton’s face. “You’re looking at me like you know something I don’t.” Calum pokes him in his dimple, feeling both cross and fond. “I don’t like it.” 

Ashton’s grin makes his dimples deepen. “I know loads of things you don’t, Cal,” he says and catches Calum’s finger, tugging it down and fitting their fingers together. 

It makes Calum’s pulse speed up, a casually sweet gesture that doesn’t mean anything but somehow means everything. “You can talk to me,” Ashton says. “You know I’ll love you no matter what.”

Ashton can say things like that with a sincere, honest heart, casual and offhand like it doesn’t make Calum ache. 

Ashton’s accent gets more pronounced when he’s relaxed, when he’s comfortable. Calum can hear home in his voice, reminded of late afternoons in Ashton’s car, scream-singing along to music from long before they were born, as he drove them home from band practice. He remembers thinking back then that as long as he and Ashton could stick together, everything would be fine. 

Calum doesn’t want to know the answer but it’s a question he needs to ask. “What did I say last night?” 

It’s hard to make himself look Ashton in the eyes. He looks at his nose and wonders what it would be like to lean in and kiss him there, right on the little curved tip. 

Ashton tugs on Calum’s hand where their fingers are still knotted together. It’s insistent and Calum looks up, looks right at Ashton. “Nothing I didn’t already know,” he says. “I was just waiting for you to say it first.” 

Calum frowns. “Bullshit, you were not,” he says, wondering if this is how nightmares begin. 

“Calum,” Ashton says very seriously. “You’re my soulmate, and I love you.” Calum can tell in the way he says it that he’s echoing Calum’s own words, giving them back to him. 

“Shut up,” Calum says, his face going hot. Of all the things to say to Ashton when’s so drunk he won’t remember it hours later. They’re words he’s rehearsed in his head, always in scenarios that didn’t involve him having to get wasted first in order to say them. 

“Oh, you don’t believe me?” Ashton untangles their hands and cups Calum’s very pink face between his palms. 

“That was just - not how I was going to tell you.”

“I thought it was pretty good,” Ashton says. “It was desperately romantic.” His face breaks into a smile. “Right until you tripped over the bed.” 

Of course. It makes sense. His knee feels very sore this morning. 

Calum lets out a breath and with it, all the tension in his shoulders and neck. He’s suddenly lighter than he’s been since deciding he was going to tell Ashton the truth. Before the end of his birthday he’d texted to Luke and Michael. 

Michael had sent a string of emojis Calum was still working on decoding. Luke had sent sweet good luck bro.

“Well that’s good,” Calum says, shifting his hips forward and tangling his leg with Ashton’s. Ashton doesn’t cuddle much, but he’ll cuddle with Calum. It seems obvious, now that the knows the truth. He wonders what else he’s missed. “I would have hated to do something embarrassing.” 

“Are you going to kiss me, Casanova?” Ashton slides a warm hand down Calum’s side to rest at his hip. “Or should we wait until my next birthday?” 

“Fuck you,” Calum laughs, already leaning in. Ashton meets him halfway, his own laugh high and familiar. 

Calum’s imagined a first kiss with Ashton a hundred different ways over the years, from a kiss hidden in the bunks on their first tour bus to hiking in Maui to smoking up together in their first LA apartment. It feels as close to _perfect_ as anything could possibly get, basking in sunlight and kissing each other with laughing mouths, nothing between them. 

Ashton drapes an arm over Calum’s shoulder, digs his fingers into his hip and parts his lips. Calum slides a hand into Ashton’s hair, holding him close in case this is a dream and Ashton's about to disappear into smoke, slipping through his grasp. 

Ashton’s mouth is cool and slick and he kisses with an aggressiveness that Calum finds both sexy and endearing. 

He’s more than happy to give himself over to Ashton. 

He relaxes into the kiss, taking in everything from the way Ashton’s breathing hitches to the sweep of his tongue in Calum’s mouth. Calum wants to spend forever kissing Ashton. 

They kiss until Calum can’t breathe. Until he’s sure Ashton can feel how hard he is, until they’re both overheated, their bodies slick with sweat. 

“Should we stop?” Ashton asks when Calum’s lost track of time. His lips feel tender, like the rest of him, like the way his heart aches for this. 

“Keep going,” Calum breathes and leans back in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I'm on [Tumblr](https://elliebirdthings.tumblr.com/).


End file.
